Favourite Shostakovich symphonies...

[Lethevich]

...excluding the most popular ones.

I still haven't fully gotten a grip on Shostakovich's cycle, and maybe some others haven't either - and standard favourite polls are tainted by the same obvious choices being picked over and over again, leaving people without enough votes to pick their outsider favourites. So I am offering this one with the most obvious choices excluded. Does anyone want to advocate any of these lesser-known works, or maybe you enjoy one of them just as much as the excluded choices? Thanks for voting!

[DavidW]

My absolute favorite out of all of them (including the missing ones) IS #8!   So it works well for me.

[hornteacher]

Number 9.  I love the Neoclassical humor and how DS pulled musical digs at Stalin.

[bhodges]

Nos. 6 and 11 would be in my top three anyway, so I'm happy, and I added No. 8.  (My first choice for the third spot would be No. 4.)

--Bruce

[Lethevich]

Nos. 6 and 11 would be in my top three anyway, so I'm happy, and I added No. 8.  (My first choice for the third spot would be No. 4.)

No.6 is one that has stood out for me so far - both in its oddly proportioned movements, and that nice non-urban pictoral quality that so many 20th century symphonists worked towards. It is maybe as close as he gets to composers like Miaskovsky.

[Wanderer]

I was under the impression that the Eleventh was among the popular ones. Of course, its inclusion here made voting very easy.

[Dana]

      I saw Gergiev and his orchestra do the 2nd on Shostakovich's centenary, and it still stands out as a singularly vivid experience that makes you wonder about what might have been even more than the 1st symphony does.

[not edward]

For me, #14 is in the very first tier of Shostakovich's symphonies, with #4 and #15. So easy here.

I love the 9th and how DSCH hides the subversiveness behind a good-humored facade. That would be my other clear choice.

[ChamberNut]

6th, 11th and 13th for me.

[greg]

6, 11, and 14.

[Brian]

Underhanded trickster!

6 and 9

("otherwise": 5, 9, 10)

[Conor71]

I chose 6, 8 (on my first tier) and 11  .

[vandermolen]

In a good performance I rather like the largely discredited No 12.

[ChamberNut]

6th, 11th and 13th for me.

I forgot the 8th was listed there.  Cross off 13th and put 8th

[greg]

In a good performance I rather like the largely discredited No 12.

Me, too- one of the runners-up.

[Drasko]

Sixth, all you wanted to know about Shostakovich in under half an hour (or an hour if you got Bernstein by mistake): intense slow movement, driving scherzo and madcap finale. What is not to like.

even my home band can play it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL0H2MJ-SsM

I also like 11th, 13th and 14th.

[greg]

What is not to like.

The lopsidedness of the structure. Now, if he were to have written an intense, slow 4th movement to end the thing, I think it would have been one of his best, alongside 4 and 10.

[Drasko]

So only symmetry counts as acceptable structure. Well, one learns something everyday.

[offbeat]

No 8 for me - the emotion and bleakness is overwhelming

Close second is 4 - totally quirky like a magical mystery tour 

Although the Leningrad is popular is mainly for the first movement - but totally love the slow movement - very heartfelt and unusual for him in my view  0:)

[Guido]

I'm amazed that the 8th is so well loved. Saying this as a Shostakovich fan, I found it incredibly boring both times I heard it... Obviously I'll need to try it again, but there's nothing he does here that he doesn't do better else-where.